By Will Musgrove
Action.
Stage left: Jerry and the gang entered the apartment. Despite the differences in our roles, we were all cast to attend a party. I mouthed “I don’t know” to Eight. Extras don’t speak. Our voices might catch on the boom microphones, so we pretend to speak. On a show about nothing, I said nothing.
The word extra means additional. The studio needed additional people to make the party believable. When people ask me what I do for a living, I always mouth: “Additional believability.” Imagine you’re walking down a busy city street. Now minus all the additional. What’s left? Depends on if you’re the star or not.
Instead of names, the director assigned us numbers. I was Five. The man wearing the colorful sweater standing next to me, Eight.
“Cut,” the director said, forcing everyone back to their starting marks. “Five, look happy to be here. It’s a party.”
What the director didn’t get was not everyone at a party, for whatever reason, is happy to be at the party. An observant viewer would watch this scene and think: “Everyone seems too happy. I went to a party last weekend and had a horrible time.”
Television is an illusion.
But even an illusion must be believable to work.
Why was I upset?
Eight had just mouthed the believable. Not the unbelievable we disguise as believable. No, the believable believable.
“Isn’t it weird we’re acting like we’re at a party when we could be at an actual party?”
Action.
Stage left: Jerry and the gang reentered the apartment. I’d known Eight since back when we both had names. Real names. Not just numbers. We came to town to be seen. Instead, we became the reassuring invisible, the invisible who allow you to breathe a sigh of relief and tell yourself: “Okay, I’m buying this.”
“I mean,” Eight mouthed, holding up his red plastic cup, “there’s nothing in this. All I want is there to be something in this.”
The live studio audience laughed and laughed. If you looked closer, though, you’d see a world within a world, a world behind the laughs, a world you might not otherwise notice. You’d see the additional, the extra. You’d see the seams where fake meets real. You’d see our sacrifice to make this all believable.
“You know what?” Eight said out loud. “Let’s find a real party. Let’s fill our cups.”
Eight turned to the audience and pointed his cup at them like a knight drawing his sword. Whispers. Mumbling. Boos. The director shouted cut. The spell was broken. The unbelievable was seen for what it was, unbelievable. Everyone was forced to gaze at what was real: the emptiness of Eight’s cup.
“I want to,” I mouthed, looking away, “but can’t. It wouldn’t be believable.”
After the shoot, I wandered around downtown, searching for Eight, who’d been escorted out by security. I wanted to find him filling his cup, wanted to ask him how. I tried waving people over to ask if they’d seen him. No one stopped to help. They couldn’t see me. I couldn’t even see myself.
Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in TIMBER, The McNeese Review, Oyez Review, Tampa Review, Vestal Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or williammusgrove.com.
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